


Tell-A-Vengers

by celtic7irish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Miscommunication, Possibly Pre-Relationship, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:42:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celtic7irish/pseuds/celtic7irish
Summary: Tony talks to Rhodey, who talks to Sam, who talks to Steve, which is overheard by Clint, who spills it to Natasha, who mentions it to Bucky. But like the game Telephone the original words have gotten scrambled and now Bucky wants to know exactly what Tony meant. Unfortunately, he can't seem to find him.





	1. The Beginning (Rhodey)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InvisbleDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvisbleDragon/gifts).



> I didn't have this done in time for the WinterIron Christmas exchange, but I did finish it, so I'm going to post it on its own anyhow. From this prompt by InvisbleDragon:
> 
> Tony talks to Rhodey, who talks to Sam, who talks to Steve, which is overheard by Clint, who spills it to Natasha, who mentions it to Bucky. But like the game Telephone the original words have gotten scrambled and now Bucky wants to know exactly what Tony meant. Unfortunately, he can't seem to find him.

Tony scowled at the blueprints that Jarvis had provided for him at his request.  It had taken some sneaky maneuvering to break into the appropriate files at SHIELD Headquarters with no one the wiser.  As an extra bonus, Tony now knew that Phil Coulson was alive, and had confirmed that Fury was still a lying son-of-a-bitch. 

 

“How does that even work?!” he demanded, stabbing a screwdriver at the schematics.  “I mean, I get that it was seventy years ago, but there’s no way that’s not hurting him.”  He muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath.  Around him, the inner workings of the Winter Soldier’s cybernetic arm spun in lazy blue circles.

 

“I swear, I could do better in my sleep,” he sighed, dropping the screwdriver.  “All right, Jarvis.  We’re going to fix this.  Think he’ll let me? I mean, I’ve gotta admit that I might have ulterior motives here.”  Despite the fact that there was no way that arm was functional without causing James Barnes an incredible amount of pain, the technology itself was fascinating.  Tony had wanted to get his hands on it for quite a while, and he just _knew_ he could make something better.  More sensitive, more durable, less painful.  And without any of the hidden control or disabling triggers that Hydra had undoubtedly implanted into the prosthetic.

 

 _“I have no data from which to extrapolate the reaction of Sergeant Barnes,”_ Jarvis replied.  _“However, perhaps Captain Rogers would be amenable to discussing the possibilities with him.”_   He paused.  _“Of course, you could simply ask Sergeant Barnes,”_ he suggested.

 

It was sound advice.  Which meant, of course, that Tony felt free to ignore it.

 

“Nah. He’ll love it!” he decided, clapping his hands together!  “All right, J, let’s get to work,” he decided.

 

Jarvis made a noise reminiscent of a human’s sigh, but broke down the specs nonetheless.  _“Colonel Rhodes is requesting entrance,”_ he added politely.

 

Tony’s grin widened.  “Fantastic! Let him in!” he ordered, and the doors slid open, admitting a harried-looking Rhodey.  “Honeybunch!” Tony exclaimed.  “Did Barnes finally finish kicking your ass across the gym?” he demanded.  For some reason, the two soldiers had taken to each other immediately upon introduction, and oftentimes sparred together.

 

Rhodey rolled his eyes.  “Cap came by,” he said by way of explanation, wandering over to take a look at the diagrams and schematics spread out in the air around Tony.  “Wait, is that…Barnes’ arm?” he asked, intrigued.

 

Tony grinned.  “Yeah.  I think I can make some improvements.  Wanna help?” he asked.  Rhodey might not be an engineer like he was, but he did have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, and he was an excellent partner.  Like Bruce, he knew enough to ask the right questions, and understand the answers.

 

His best friend grinned back at him.  “Why do I get the feeling this is more than just you being nice, Tone?” he asked wryly.

 

“Because you know me and tech,” Tony retorted, reaching out to rub a hand against one of Dummy’s joints, causing the bot to make a whirring sound of contentment.  “I’ve been dying to get my hands on that tech since I first saw it.”

 

Rhodey made a face.  “Ew, Tony. I don’t need to know about you and your damn technophilia in regards to Captain America’s best friend!”  He paused for a moment, considering.  “Please tell me Cap doesn’t know,” he pleaded.

 

Tony just laughed, throwing an arm around the other man’s waist.  “Come on, sourpuss, help a guy out, would you?” he teased, pulling Rhodey into the middle of the schematics.  With a huff, Rhodey gave in, and Tony grinned in triumph, reaching for one of the images.

 

“He’s gonna love this!” he exclaimed excitedly, delving merrily into the world of engineering and dragging his friend along for the ride.


	2. The First Mistake (Sam)

Sam was eating a yogurt at the kitchen bar on the Avengers common floor when Rhodey strode in, his hair still damp from a quick shower. “Hey, man,” Sam greeted. “Stark finally let you go?”

The War Machine pilot grinned at Sam, walking past him to rummage in the fridge. “More like he got so involved in his work that he forgot I was there. So I snuck out,” he admitted. Sam laughed.

“I hear you,” he replied. It wasn’t unusual for Stark to bury himself in the workshop for days on end if somebody – usually Bruce or Cap – didn’t drag him out of there. “What’s he working on now?” he asked curiously. As far as he knew, the Iron Man armor was in perfect working condition, and none of them had put in requests for updated weaponry or armor.

Rhodey shrugged, his back turned as he threw together a couple of sandwiches. “He’s working on a new arm for Barnes,” he replied easily. “Pretty sure he’s in love.”

Sam froze for a moment, his head snapping up to stare incredulously at the other man’s back. There was no way he’d heard that right. “A new arm?” he repeated dumbly, unable to even think about the second part without breaking his brain. “Why?”

Rhodey glanced back at him with a shrug. “Who knows? Apparently he thinks the guy needs a new arm. We didn’t really get around to discussing why.” He set his plate at the bar and then settled on a stool next to Sam. “Speaking of Barnes, where is the guy?” he asked.

Sam was grateful for the change of conversation. “I think Steve took him to a museum,” he said, licking the last of his yogurt from the spoon. “I think he got a couple of those City Pass things, so they’ll be gone all day.” 

Rhodey nodded. “Cool,” he decided. “Hey, you wanna take those fancy wings of yours for a spin?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I need to think about something other than Tony and his newest obsession for a while.”

Sam nodded quickly. “Yeah, yes, let’s do that,” he agreed, wishing he could bleach his brain. He did not want to think about Stark and Barnes – or about Cap’s reaction to Stark’s interest in his best pal.

Standing, the two men headed for their suits. A long flight was just what they needed.


	3. The Second Mistake (Steve)

The space between Steve’s shoulders was itching, and he twisted his head around, catching sight of Sam watching him with an odd expression on his face. Sam blinked at him when he realized he was being watched in return, then looked away. Steve frowned.

“Stevie?” Bucky murmured from behind him. Steve turned to his best friend and offered him a reassuring smile.

“Yeah, Buck?” he asked, deciding to check in with Sam later. He was sure the other man would’ve approached him by now if it was urgent. Sam didn’t seem to be panicking. He was more considering, so Steve did his best to ignore the feeling that he was being watched, again.

His friend was looking at him oddly now, and Steve blinked. “Oh, sorry. What is it?” he asked sheepishly.

Bucky just gave him a sharp look. “I asked if you’ve seen Stark around lately.”

Steve shook his head, wondering why Bucky had been looking for the engineer in the first place. “He’s probably in his workshop,” he said vaguely. “That’s where he spends most of his time when he’s not on a mission or at SI.” And if he could wriggle out of going to SI and hide in the lab, Steve was sure he would, too. Tony Stark had never met a board room he couldn’t wriggle out of.

Bucky considered that for a moment, then accepted Steve’s answer with a nod. “Am I allowed in there?” he asked next, curious.

Steve tipped his head. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, biting his tongue before he could ask why Bucky would want to go visit Stark’s lab. The Soldier hated labs and workshops with a passion, anything that reminded him of the torture he’d been put through as an asset of Hydra. “Jarvis?”

“Sergeant Barnes has an access code to the workshop,” Jarvis replied. “Sergeant Barnes, I will ensure that you are provided with the code should you wish to enter. I apologize that you were not informed of your access privileges.” He did sound regretful, which still managed to surprise Steve, even after all these months. How could a computer sound so very human?

“Cool,” Bucky decided, tucking his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Is Stark in there now?”

“Sir is in the workshop,” Jarvis confirmed. “Shall I alert him to your impending arrival?”

Bucky was already wandering off, but he grinned. “Nah. If you tell him I’m comin’, he’ll just run away,” he drawled. He paused to considering . “Unless you’ve gotta tell him,” he amended. “I wouldn’t want you to break protocol just ‘cause I wanna see the guy.”

As Jarvis assured the soldier that he had no protocols in place that required him to alert Tony about any of the Avengers who wanted to enter the labs, as long as they had an access code, Sam wandered over to Steve. “Where’s he running off to?” the man murmured.

“To see Stark,” Steve admitted mournfully, completely confused. It took him several seconds to realize that Sam had gone completely still next to him. He turned his head to stare at the other man through narrowed eyes. “Sam?” he questioned sharply, which seemed to snap the other man out of it.

Sam blinked, then let out a harsh breath of air. “So I guess it’s true, then,” he muttered.

“What’s true?” Steve demanded. “Do you know why Bucky is going to see Stark in the workshop?”

Dark eye flicked up and then away again, and Sam frowned. “If he hasn’t said anything to you yet, then I probably shouldn’t, either,” he sighed. Steve fought the urge to reach out and shake the other man. Same must’ve had an inkling about his thoughts on the matter, because he shrugged. “All right, but only because the last thing we need is you storming down there after your buddy and taking down the building or something,” he sighed at last.

Steve couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t take off after his best friend anyhow, but he nodded to show that he understood. “Stark’s kind of got a crush on Barnes,” Sam said quickly. Steve’s mind stuttered, then came to a grinding halt as he tried to process that. “I guess he hasn’t gotten around to actually telling him that, though,” he surmised. “I mean, Bucky hasn’t said anything to you, has he?” he asked, looking askance at the taller man.

Steve shook his head. “Um….no,” he replied, his voice strangled. “He hasn’t said anything.” Steve wasn’t even sure if Bucky liked guys. He’d always been popular with the dames. Not that Steve wouldn’t support him if he wanted to have a guy, but Stark? That just sounded like a horrible idea. Bless Pepper for her steadfast loyalty, but if even she couldn’t hold out, then what was to keep Tony from breaking his best friend’s heart?

Sam sighed. “Look, maybe I misunderstood,” he said uneasily. “I mean, maybe Rhodes meant something else.”

Steve just frowned, staring blankly at the elevator Bucky had disappeared through.

He really, really hoped it was something else. Because if Stark pursued Bucky, he’d have to get through a pissed off Super Soldier first.


	4. The Third Mistake (Clint)

Clint rubbed his hands together gleefully, grinning. So Tony was interested in Bucky, was he? Oh, this was good.

Steve and Sam hadn’t noticed him yet, perched as he was in the vents above the common living area. He had seen Bucky wander off, but had figured it was just because the Soldier had been promised fancy new weapons by Stark. Clint had cheerfully shown off his Stark-made bow and arrows, and even Natasha had been proud to show Bucky the slender, perfectly balanced blades that Tony had made for her.

Tony being in love – or in lust, at least – with Bucky would explain a couple of things, though. For one, the fact that the man seemed obsessed with Bucky’s enhancements in a way that he never was with Steve. Technically, they both had Super Soldier serum in them. Maybe it had more to do with Bucky’s programming?

Oh, Nat was going to love this! As much as she pretended not to care, Clint knew that Natasha had an interest in Tony’s well-being. They were actually friends now, which seemed to surprise both of them.

Still, he’d better verify things for himself. If he brought this to Nat without any evidence to back it up, she’d nail him to the floor. And then tattle on him to Coulson.

With only one option open to him, Clint grinned as he moved along the vents, heading for Tony’s labs. He was pretty sure that Tony had designed these walkways to be large enough for him to crawl through easily, knowing his penchant for doing so. Tony insisted that the tunnels were for the security and cleaning bots that moved around the ceilings and walls of the building, but Clint rarely came across them, and they were still smaller than the vents. Clint was pretty positive that Jarvis had standing orders to monitor his location when he was crawling around the building and to keep the bots out of his way.

Ten minutes later, he was crouched above Tony’s workshop, just in time to see Tony reach out and touch Bucky’s metal arm. Wordlessly, the dark-haired soldier held it out to him for inspection. Tony’s head was bent as his fingers felt along the ridges and plates, occasionally murmuring questions that Bucky answered just as quietly, his attention focused entirely on the other man.

Clint drew back; he didn’t need to see anything else. Just before he was away and gone, Bucky looked straight up at the vents. Clint didn’t stick around long enough to read his expression.


	5. The Fourth Mistake (Natasha)

Clint grunted as Natasha threw him to the mat for the third time. He was actually doing pretty well holding his own, and had managed to pin her, briefly, once. However, he was usually better than that; he was distracted today.

“Want to fill me in?” she asked when Clint tapped out, keeping his arm pinned behind his back. Clint turned his head so he could scowl up at her, but Natasha wasn’t impressed. She just wrenched his arm a bit harder, and he yelped.

“All right, all right! I’ll talk!” Clint cried. Natasha released him, standing up so Clint could roll over onto his back, clutching his wrist. “Geez, no need to be so brutal, Nat,” he grumbled. She just crossed her arms, content to wait him out, and Clint sighed, his head dropping down onto the mat. “I think that Stark’s got a crush on Steve’s war pal,” he muttered reluctantly.

Natasha felt her eyebrows rise in surprise. She rolled over that statement in her mind for a moment, admitting that she could see it happening. Maybe. Stark was a notorious playboy, but after Afghanistan, that had mostly stopped. Pepper and Tony had been together for a while, but Natasha had known that they wouldn’t make it, as awful as that knowledge had felt. Pepper hadn’t been able to handle Tony being Iron Man, hadn’t been able to deal with the risks he took on a near-daily basis. And once he’d joined the Avengers? Things had started going downhill rapidly.

But Barnes….Barnes was a soldier. He knew the risks, took them himself. He could stand with the rest of them, fight side-by-side with people like Steve and Tony and the Hulk. But that didn’t negate the fact that Barnes had killed Stark’s parents. Could Tony move past that, enough to actually be a good partner to Barnes?

“You have proof,” she surmised, well aware that Clint wasn’t stupid enough to come to her with nothing more than a rumor.

Clint allowed her to help him to his feet, his eyes sharp and intelligent as the met her gaze. “Nat, they were in Tony’s lab,” he admitted. “Barnes let Tony touch him.” Natasha stilled; Clint wasn’t talking about the kind of touch that happened amongst teammates, or even friends.

“He gave Tony access to his metal arm?” she asked, dumbfounded. Barnes guarded that arm as fiercely as Tony had once protected the arc reactor in his chest, terrified of what could happen if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Natasha knew that there were traps and triggers hidden inside the arm, possibly a kill switch, though the Winter Soldier had never confirmed that. Not even Steve was allowed near it outside of the gym. For Barnes to let Tony touch it...that was both unexpected and somehow terrifying.

She frowned. “Does Barnes know?” she asked. If he was letting Tony that close, he might be aware that something was going on, but Tony wasn’t exactly forthcoming about things like emotions, and Barnes was still pretty oblivious to anything more subtle than an outright confession.

Clint shrugged, then shook his head. “Maybe?” he said. “I dunno. I don’t think so, because otherwise we’d probably have to hold Steve back from throwing Tony out a window or something,” he observed wryly. Natasha had to agree. Which left only one course of action.

She needed to talk to James Barnes. Soon.


	6. The Final Mistake (Bucky)

Bucky wasn’t exactly surprised when Natasha cornered him one evening, following a brief but satisfying scuffle with a small AIM cell that had built – and released – a horde of electricity-devouring locust bots. Part of downtown New York City was still in the dark. Clint was recovering from a nasty electrical shock under the careful eye of one Phil Coulson, Thor was with Steve at the battle site, and Tony and Bruce were happily ensconced in Tony’s lab, dissecting a couple of the locust bots to see if they could figure out how they’d stored the electricity they’d absorbed – or where they’d sent it.

Bucky was busy dismantling and cleaning his guns and knives, more for his own peace of mind than any real need; there had been no need to use the guns against the locusts, and his primary job had been to destroy the control unit, which he had done quite expediently by crushing important pieces of it with his metal hand after Iron Man had dropped him practically on top of the device.

His arm twinged painfully, spasming so that his metal fingers clenched tight before relaxing, and Bucky bit back a curse. He should probably have that looked at sooner rather than later, lest the arm become wholly inoperable.

He acknowledged Natasha’s presence with a soft acknowledgement. “Black Widow.”

“Soldier,” she replied flatly. There was something off in her tone, though, and Bucky found himself looking up and giving her all of his attention. But Natasha wasn’t looking at his face. “You should have Tony take a look at your arm.” Her expression gave nothing away, and Bucky shrugged, turning back to his weapons and securing them about his person.

“He’s busy,” he said in reply. “I’ll go see ‘im before I become…inefficient,” he reassured his former protégé, taking a moment to decide which of the words cascading through his mind would be least offensive to her.

Natasha sighed. “I think he’d probably prefer to see you now,” she huffed at him, her tone bordering on exasperated. Bucky glanced at her in surprise, blinking when she glared at him, her hands on her hips. Part of it was an act, he knew, but Natasha seemed genuinely irritated with him. “His research can wait. I’d think he’d want to make sure you’re okay first,” she said pointedly.

Bucky finally realized that what she was saying and what she was saying weren’t the same thing. “Spit it out, _ryzhka_ ,” he said. “You ‘n archer-boy have been dancing around somethin’ for ages now. Wanna fill me in?”

Natasha frowned at him, then closed her eyes. “Ah, _Soldat_ ,” she murmured. “Tony hasn’t said anything to you.” It wasn’t a question, so Bucky didn’t answer. Instead, he propped his hip against the table and crossed his arms, wincing as his metal arm whined in protest. Natasha gave him a wry smile. “Tony doesn’t like to talk about his feelings,” she said mysteriously. “Maybe you should take the lead, if you’re interested.”

With that, she turned and walked away, her hips swaying. Behind her, Bucky narrowed his eyes. Just what was it that everybody knew that he didn’t? And why did they think that Tony held the answer to the question?

He supposed there was only one way to find out. He had to go find Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ryzhka - diminutive of ryzhaya (red-headed woman) - "little red"


	7. The Hunt for Tony

Finding Tony turned out to be considerably harder than Bucky had anticipated. He had assumed that Stark was still in the lab, but it seemed that their resident genius – or one of them, anyway – had wandered off at some point. Bruce politely informed Bucky that he didn’t expect Tony back for several hours at least, and then proceeded to continue his research. The Soldier had left, having no further business in the lab.

Stark wasn’t in his workshop, either, tinkering with cars or the Iron Man suit. Bucky frowned, then tipped his head up to the ceiling. “Jarvis?” he asked uncertainly, not sure if the AI would answer him or not. When they’d first been introduced, Bucky had jumped like a scalded cat and been almost unforgivably rude. Jarvis hadn’t held it against him, and he’d managed to apologize about the robot butler comment, but Bucky was still uncomfortable around the AI. The others treated him like a person, and Bucky had a hard time considering a machine that he couldn’t see to be a person, but he did understand that it was something Tony had created , and that it had its own personality. He vaguely remembered Howard Stark talking about a family butler once, and wondered if this Jarvis was modeled after that one. From all accounts, Tony had adored Edwin Jarvis and his wife Ana. They hadn’t been part of the Winter Soldier’s mission, so beyond knowing that they existed, Bucky knew only what Tony had told him.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Jarvis acknowledged, his tone gentle and non-threatening. Bucky relaxed a bit.

“D’you know where Tony’s gone?” he asked, grimacing at the plaintive tone. He was anxious to get this mess over with, a leftover from the Winter Soldier. Complete mission as quickly and efficiently as possible, don’t waste time or resources.

Jarvis hesitated for only a millisec – but he did hesitate, Bucky noticed – then admitted, “I do not.” Bucky’s breath caught in his throat, a thrill of alarm going through him. “Sir deviated from his itinerary and left the Mark Forty-Seven and his phone behind. I have been attempting to locate him through…less official means.” Which meant he was probably hacking city cameras and SHIELD computers this very instant, Bucky surmised. He sometimes wondered if Tony hadn’t given the AI too much autonomy, but Jarvis never seemed to overstep his bounds without instruction. Unless, apparently, Tony disappeared. Then all bets were off.

Bucky considered the implications of what he was about to do for all of three seconds. “I’m gonna search the old fashioned way,” he decided. “If you’ll let me have his phone and the suitcase armor, I’ll go find ‘im. Where was he headed?”

There was no hesitation this time, Jarvis providing what information he could, even as Bucky stalked out the door and headed for the Quinjet platform. The sooner he found Tony Stark, the sooner he could find out what was actually going on.


	8. The Explanation and Resolution

It turned out that Tony Stark was apparently an expert at being kidnapped. Fortunately for him, he was also an expert at escaping after he’d been kidnapped, usually by causing so much trouble for his captors that they realized it would be far safer for their sanity if they just let him walk away.

Of course, the part that pissed Bucky off was that Tony had known the bad guys were after him, and had offered himself up as bait. It actually was the most expedient way to gain access to AIM’s latest technological nightmare before it was released on the streets of New York, but that didn’t negate the fact that Tony could have died. And the Avengers would have had no idea what had happened to him.

For the first few hours after recovering a battered, singed Tony Stark from downtown Mahattan – AIM had been foolish to keep him so close by, the morons – Bucky was content to let the Avengers have at him. Banner had nearly hulked out, Steve’s fists hadn’t unclenched before he’d finally stormed out after benching Tony for the next month barring world-ending disaster, Clint had just mourned the fact that he hadn’t been allowed to tag along, and Natasha had delivered a blistering lecture and a well-placed punch that had left Tony whimpering and curled as far away from her as possible. Thor had been the only one who had praised Tony’s inventiveness, though he had noted that having friends around to help was more likely to succeed than by going alone.

Once Tony seemed properly chastised, he was left alone with Bucky, who just stared him down until Tony dropped his eyes, one hand picking at the sheets tossed over his lap. “Umm…could you just, maybe, yell at me now and get it over with? And if you’re gonna punch me, please avoid my face. It’s my best feature.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but stopped himself, and Bucky sighed, uncrossing his arms.

“Yer a damn idiot, ya know that, right?” he demanded wearily, his Brooklyn accent thicker with weariness. “But you’re alive, and I think the others have yelled at ya enough. That’s not why I’m here,” he admitted.

Tony looked up sharply. “It’s not?” he asked, confused. “I figured you were here to guard me or something.”

Bucky snorted. “Jarvis has got that covered,” he said pointedly, and Tony winced. Jarvis was in a snit, which meant that Tony couldn’t so much as hobble to the bathroom without the AI sending an alert to the rest of the Avengers. Bucky didn’t envy him in the slightest. After all, it wasn’t like the AI would get tired. Bucky wondered idly if Jarvis was capable of holding a grudge. He was pretty sure the answer was ‘yes’.

“Okay, then,” Tony said, bringing them back on track. “So what’s up, Red October?”

Bucky allowed himself to be distracted for a moment. “Red October?” he asked, intrigued. He knew that Tony had a variety of nicknames for his teammates and friends, but he’d never been given any name other than Soldier by the other man before.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Jarvis, next movie night, queue up The Hunt for Red October. Do we have the book?”

 _“The Hunt for Red October is in the library,”_ Jarvis replied with amused tolerance. _“Shall I have a copy delivered to Sergeant Barnes’ suite?”_

“I can get it myself,” Bucky protested, blushing. “Jus’ tell me where it is?” he asked.

 _“Certainly, Sergeant Barnes,”_ Jarvis agreed. _“Please let me know when you would like to retrieve it.”_

Bucky murmured a sincere thanks before returning the conversation back to its original topic. “What did you say about me six days ago?” he asked.

Tony blinked at him, confused. “Uh, you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific, Elsa,” he stated. “I don’t remember what I said ten minutes ago, much less six days ago.”

Bucky scowled, unconsciously straightening his spine from its exhausted slouch. His flesh hand touched briefly along his metal one; if Tony didn’t boot him out in the next minute, he’d ask the other man to help with repairs. “I dunno,” he admitted. “But you said somethin’, and now everybody’s lookin’ at me funny.”

Tony tilted his head back to lean against the wall with a frown. “Jarvis, do you know what conversation he’s talking about?”

There is a moment of silence while Jarvis reviews the logs for the past week. There is laughter in his voice (Bucky is finally starting to see why the others consider him to be more human than machine) when he says, “I believe Sergeant Barnes may be referring to the conversation you held with Colonel Rhodes regarding a possible replacement for Sergeant Barnes’ prosthetic limb.”

“Play recording,” Tony ordered. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

 _“Because you know me and tech,”_ Tony’s voice filled the room, as clear as if he was speaking right in front of Bucky, and the two men stared at each other, confused. _“I’ve been dying to get my hands on that tech since I first saw it.”_

Rhodey’s voice was filled with amused disgust. _“Ew, Tony. I don’t need to know about you and your damn technophilia in regards to Captain America’s best friend!”_ There was a brief pause. _“Please tell me Cap doesn’t know.”_

The playback ended, and Tony said slowly, “Okay. Well, that was true. Your arm shouldn’t work the way it’s set up, but it does. But I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure that it’s gotta be causing you a ton of pain.” Bucky didn’t deny it, and he sighed. “But I was going to ask, I swear,” he added. “Just a soon as I had a working prototype to show you."

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t care about that,” he said impatiently. “If you think you can do better, I’d appreciate the help,” he admitted. “What I wanna know is how that turned into the Black Widow ordering me to come talk to you about _feelings_.” He put all the disgust behind that single word that he could manage, and Tony huffed a laugh, grimacing as that agitated his bruised ribs.

Jarvis obligingly played snippets of other conversations, with video in case the audio wasn’t damning enough. By the end of it, Tony was howling, clutching at his ribs, and Bucky was wishing he could sink into the floor and disappear. Or else murder the Avengers so that he could escape this humiliation.

“Oh my god. It’s like Telephone!” Tony was chortling, tears of laughter streaming down his reddened cheeks. It wasn’t a pretty look, but his amusement was contagious, and Bucky found himself relenting enough to give him a wry smile in return, grudgingly amused. He was still gonna strangle a couple of people, though.

“Telephone?” he asked. “Is that like Russian Scandal?” It wasn’t a game he’d ever played, but some of the younger ones in the Red Room would play it in the beginning. The Winter Soldier hadn’t understood why their trainers tolerated such a game, until he realized that it was, in a way, training of its own, helping the children to understand how easy it was to change just a single word in a sentence, and come out with an entirely different result than what was originally intended. It was a practice they could later put into real life, the subtle twist of words over time to slowly change the direction of history.

Tony grinned. “So, what do you say we really give them something to talk about?” he chortled. Bucky shifted position to indicate that he was listening, and Tony’s smile widened. “I have the prototype almost finished, it’s in the fabricators now. Then I’ll have to handle some fine tuning, but I’ll need data for you for that part. So…I’m thinking we go into the workshop, lock everybody out, and darken the windows.”

Bucky considered the other man’s proposal, his head bowed so that his bangs shielded his eyes from view while he thought. Stark was proposing that they encourage the rumors that the two of them were…together. Was he suggesting a prank? Or did he just like stirring up trouble? Was there a difference?

And, of course, the most important question: did Bucky care?

With a shrug and a carefree grin that hinted at the man underneath the Soldier, he said, “Why not?” He paused for a second, giving Tony a look that forestalled the other man’s reply. “After you’re healed,” he stipulated.

Tony sighed, but slumped back with a pout, crossing his arms carefully over his chest. “Fine,” he grumbled.

Bucky smirked, pulling a chair up next to the bed and settling into it, handing over a tablet that he’d brought with him just in case he needed the bribe. “Now, how ‘bout we get some plannin’ done?” he suggested slyly. “’s not like we ain’t got the time.” He offered Tony his most charmingly rakish grin; it felt a bit unusual, but Tony’s eyes darkened appreciatively, and his smile grew more sincere.

“Yeah, okay, let’s….yeah,” Tony managed to choke out, his hand reaching automatically for the tablet Bucky was holding out to him. He didn’t even complain about being handed something.

Bucky relaxed back into his seat, content to have the mystery solved and a new project to focus on. The Avengers weren’t going to know what hit them.


End file.
